John O'Mahony

John O'Mahony (1815-7 February 1877) was a co-founder of the Fenian Brotherhood in the United States.

Biography
John O'Mahony was born in Kilbehenny, County Limerick, Ireland in 1815 to a family of minor Roman Catholic landed gentry. He studied Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Gaelic at Trinity College, Dublin, and he soon became a Gaelic scholar and Greek and Latin instructor. In 1843, he joined the Repeal Association, and he later joined the Young Irelanders during their failed 1848 uprising. He was forced to emigrate to Paris and then to New York City in 1854, and, in 1858, he and James Doheny co-founded the Fenian Brotherhood in New York. He also served as colonel of the 69th New York Infantry Regiment, but he was forced to resign in order to focus on the growth of the Fenian cause. After the end of the American Civil War, the Fenian Brotherhood became widely popular among the Irish-American Union veterans, and he remained President of the Fenian Brotherhood for many years. He died in 1877.